lines © Lilly Schwartz 2011

Lately Ezequiel and me are having quite a few discussions about changing society.  The Occupy Wall Street movement might be a reason for the topic coming up more frequently, but it has been on my mind for quite a few years. I remember what prompted the topic to me for the first time. I was 18 and still going to school. Before going on a school trip to Vienna a friend and me hitchhiked to Würzburg to go to an Africa festival. The bus to take us to Vienna picked us up in Würzburg on the way there and on the way back I was planning to get off in Würzburg again to go to a festival in Leipzig. I wasn’t quite sure yet, how I’d get there and it was already evening, but I had a half plan of walking into town and taking a train. These were times when I was used to just doing whatever I felt like.

What happened was that my teachers would not let me get off the bus, because they thought it was too dangerous to let me go alone. Although I was 18 and they had no right to do so they basically held me against my will. For my own safety as they said. I was quick to say “Freiheitsberaubung”, restricting someone’s freedom, which is a criminal offence in Germany, but since that didn’t get me anywhere I had to come along back to Düsseldorf. It lies in the opposite direction and it was really annoying since I had to go there against my will. In the morning I then had to take a train via Hannover to Leipzig which cost me a fortune and instead of 330 km I travelled about 1000 km that day. I arrived hours too late to find a space for my tent and as a consequence I almost got into a fight with some people who were trying to hold some space for their friends. All in all a really annoying experience.

What has this to do with Occupy Wall Street? Well, we’re all held in line by our governments, because they assume that we’re not only stupid enough to need their protection, but also that we can’t be trusted since we’re savages deep down, just like Freud said. They try to keep us stupid through indoctrination suggesting that we will be happy if we buy new cars and new flatscreen TVs. With the TV they hold our minds hostage so that they are in control of what we see and know about what’s going on in the world. Even movements like Occupy Wall Street could possibly be part of this global attempt to keep us in line. After all the movement is built on the assumption that we’re going to be happier as soon as we have the money that the bankers have now. It’s therefore maintaining the propaganda that striving for property is to be the highest goal in our society. This means that on a more general level Occupy Wall Street can therefore well be part of maintaining the status quo. I bet that’s not exactly what people have in mind when they think about the movement.

[Read more about this in the next post.]